White like sin
by BlackFool84
Summary: "I've been many things in my life. Daughter and killer, bride and prostitute, sister and traitor, lover and perjurer; sometimes wise, sometimes bold, sometimes foolish and harmless. I believed and I doubted, I dared and I lost. Far too many times I was scared, except when I actually should have felt so. My name is Bianca Auditore. I'm the child of an assassin and a thief."
1. Prologue

My first memory of him is a voice from the other room. An angry voice, which made me scared.  
I think I was quite young, because Vanni wasn't born yet. I was three, maybe four. No, now that I think about it I was definitely three.  
"How long did you plan to hide her from me? Did you think Antonio wouldn't tell me?"  
I was scared, because my room was dark and my mother had put me in bed even if I didn't want to. That man entered after she left me there, alone, while ghostly shadows were seeping in from the slits in the blinds.  
I've seen this memory in my mind again and again, so I must have invented lots of details. For instance, I'm sure I saw white butterflies dancing on the wall. I tried to catch one, but it dissolved as soon as I touched it, leaving shiny dust on my fingers.  
Perhaps it was a dying moth. Perhaps it wasn't even real. One shouldn't have memories from that age. Mine are so neat, that I can tell you precisely what the adults said in the next room.  
The man's voice was calmer now. It sounded broken. Pained.  
"Why didn't you tell me, Rosa?"  
Silence.  
"Would you have stayed then? Of course not, you had to leave. You always have to leave. First Firenze, then God knows where! Even if I wanted to tell you, how could I have reached you?"  
He didn't answer. I heard him sitting on the old stool, the one which always creaks.  
"Can I see her?"  
"She's sleeping."  
"Rosa, please. If you wish so, I'll never see her again. But just for once…I want to see her face."  
After a never ending minute, during which I prayed that she chased him away, I heard the door opening.  
A candle light melted darkness away, and so my white moths disappeared. My mother's blue-grey eyes were quite sad.  
"Are you awake, little one?"  
"There were butterflies."  
She didn't take my words seriously. She smiled, lifting me from my bedding to hold me in her arms.  
Then, I saw the man.  
He was tall, with a long straight nose and dark skin. He didn't look scary, but I was still quite wary about him.  
"Chi sei?*", I asked.  
He smiled too, and stretched a finger to stroke my cheek. "Mi chiamo Ezio. **"  
Then, my mother said something unnecessary. I got it from the very first moment I had heard his voice.  
"Bianca, Ezio is your father."

***Who are you?  
* * My name is Ezio.**

Hello! This is the first story I dare to publish here on , and it's a translation from my almost completed fanfic "Bianca come il peccato" (literally, "White like sin" in Italian ^^) As you may have noticed, I'm not an English native speaker, sothere might be grammatical and syntactic mistakes that I didn't see while correcting the draft. I will promptly correct them if you will be so kind to point them out! Constructive criticism is more than welcome.

_BlackFool84_


	2. Brave New World

Ezio left after two days, but he was back again in four months. Back then I couldn't understand which kind of duties kept him coming to Venezia. I only knew that, while he was staying with us at Palazzo della Seta, my mother behaved quite strangely.

My mother was a hot-headed woman. I had watched her screaming at tall-and-scary-warriors like Bartolomeo, D'Alviano, running on the rooftops to escape from the guards and talking freely in an assembly of men. Still, when Ezio was concerned she suddenly looked fragile to me. Sometimes she stared at him for never ending moments, during our meals with zio Antonio's thieves; her hands lingered on his shoulders when she helped him with his cape. And yet, she was always rude to him. I was used to her being foul-mouthed, but I admit her behavior puzzled me a little. To my father, she said the worst words she knew, the ones which even our thieves brothers would have found too rude.

One night, while I was playing outside the large office that Antonio had taken for himself - the palace where we lived once belonged to a very rich man -, I witnessed an episode that somehow was impressed in my mind. I can still recall it perfectly.

My mother came home very tired from one of the errands that Antonio had given to her group. I saw her approaching me with her arms stretched, ready to take me to our room. Then, the office's door opened.

Three people came out: zio Antonio, my father and Sister Teodora.

Teodora was a beautiful woman. Not as beautiful as my mother, but so graceful that she dazzled people with one wise, malicious glance. She didn't wear the appropriately chaste tunic which one would expect from a nun, but that's what was so great about her. My mother wasn't very happy when I stated that I wanted to be like Sister Teodora when I grew up.

Teodora seemed to like me as much as I liked her. She used to take me in her arms as soon as she could, and fondled me, and said I would become a wonderful woman one day. So she did that night, but I didn't pay too much attention, for I had noticed the cold glance that my mother had given to Ezio.

"Let's go, Bianca. It's time for you to go to sleep."

"Rosa…I'd like to talk to you. Just one moment, please."

My father looked at my mother in a way he'd never done before. His eyes were so intense, so demanding…I couldn't understand what he really meant. I thought he just wanted to argue with her in a place where I couldn't listen.

Antonio exchanged an embarrassed glance with sister Teodora. My mother's face looked as hard as iron.

"Someone has to put the child to bed."

"I can do it."

When the nun spoke so, I begged my mother to let her do it. Teodora had wonderful brown hair, and smelled good. It would have been great to fall asleep with her beside me.

So, Teodora took me in my room, and I showed her my stuffed dolls. I said, quite proudly, that my mother had sewed them for me.

"Your mother is a great woman, you know."

I was very pleased with her compliment.

"Sister, tell me…do you like my father?"

She smiled. "He's an old friend of mine, and I'm really fond of him. What about you? Do you like him?"

I shook my head, stroking my doll's woollen hair. "I don't know. He's always staring at me, but he never plays with me."

Sister Teodora chuckled.

"You must be patient with men, Bianca. Sometimes they can be so goofy! You see, that's because they don't know how to show their feelings."

While she was dressing me in my nightgown, I thought my mother was acting like a man. She looked at Ezio the same way Ezio looked at me. As she was always about to tell him something, but giving up before even opening her mouth.

"Mio padre…mi vuole bene*?"

The very idea was quite funny to me. If he did, why didn't he smile at me? Zio Antonio and zio Ugo took me on their knees and told me stories. Ezio, on the other hand, always looked like he was upset by my very existence.

Teodora's eyes rested into mine. They were calm and reassuring.

"He loves you so much that he can't show you. You should never doubt that…true love is like Our Lord's Holy Spirit." She pushed the blanket aside and gently pushed me to lie down. I obeyed, and she continued: "Like the Holy Spirit, love doesn't have a body, but you can see it on people's bodies. On their faces, in their eyes and on their skin. When you find it, you can't be mistaken."

I thought I liked her preaches more than the ones the clergymen shouted all day long in the streets, and I fell asleep against her soft breast.

A few hours later, I opened my eyes in the dark. Teodora had left, I was alone. At first, I saw white moths dancing on the wall once again. Then, I realized they weren't moths at all. It was the golden chandelier in the next room: the crystal drops dangling from its arms reflected the candles flames, throwing those tiny lights on the wall of my room. The light spots came in from a slightly open door.

I heard some whispering from next door. I got up, squeezing my doll's hand.

"La tua gelosia non ha senso.**"

My father. His hood was down, I could see his brown hair. Suddenly I felt the urge to touch mine, so similar to his own.

"If I had to be jealous of all the whores walking in and out of here, I'd be constantly wasting my time."

"Rosa…"

"Tell me about the lady of Forli, instead. I heard she's charming. They say you spent a lot of time with her in Rivaldino."

"It has been years since I've seen Caterina!"

"And of course you never went back to her, not a single time?"

"Never, not a single time. But I kept coming back for you."

My mother hesitated. She bit her lip and looked away. "For Bianca."

He took a step forward. "Not only for her."

He clenched her shoulders, causing her to look at him. "I'd lie if I'd say that I'll never leave again. If it's enough to you, I swear I'll be back. For our child's sake, and for you."

She stared at him as if she was trying to understand whether she could believe him. Then she threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him.

They parted after a long time. I heard her saying:

"Not here. The child is sleeping."

Then she took his hand and they went away. The feeble ray of candlelight crawled in my room again. I slowly walked back to my bed.

So, that was the rub. I didn't understand every single thing they said, but for once my mother hadn't been rude to him.

I hugged my doll and thought that I didn't know whether I liked my father or not. But, well, it was quite obvious that my mother liked him. So, for her sake, I would have made friends with him.

That night my brother, Giovanni Antonio Auditore, was conceived.

Vanni*** was born on a July morning, in 1493. During those nine months, the world had changed quickly. In the following years I would have learned that Lorenzo il Magnifico was gone, leaving an empty place in Firenze's government which had been readily taken by the Medici's enemies. A Genoese sailor at Isabella of Castilla's service had found a new route to reach the Indies, only to find out later that he discovered a whole new continent. Around the same time that year, my father's mortal enemy had become Pope: which means, the most powerful man in the world. The Spaniard was plotting to expand his dominions through his son Cesare's conquests, and the legacies tied with the marriages he kept imposing on his daughter Lucrezia.

Of course, at the time I didn't know anything about any of those people. It was_ my _world to have changed forever, because of Vanni's birth. I don't really know whether to thank God or to curse Him for this.

When they allowed me to see my newborn brother, I found him very ugly. His skin was reddish, and his dark hair was sparse on his big soft head. He didn't look like me at all. His face was neither hard like my father's, nor sweet like my mother's. I was pretty sure he was a crossbreed between a toad and a pig.

My father had made it back to Venice in time to be there for his birth. Before coming home, he had beenin Mantova, host of Francesco Gonzaga. The marchese**** had sent for him to discuss some important matters of politics.

"The French army is ready to cross the Alps."

My parents used to talk as if I wasn´t in the room at all. I pretended to be very interested in the way my newborn brother held my finger in his fist, while, without them knowing, I was listening very carefully to what they were saying.

"I'd like you to come and live in Monteriggioni. You and the children will be safe there."

My mother gave it a quick thought. "There are more Assassins here, than in your Monteriggioni. We are well protected in Venezia."

"Charles of France wants Napoli, and he won't hesitate to march over Venezia to reach it."

"Then let him siege the Serenissima, if he dares." My mother's bold face cracked, when she looked into my father's eyes. Then she glanced at me and Vanni. Finally, she sighed.

"I will think about it, Ezio."

In September 1493 A.D, my family moved to Tuscany, in a small burgh called Monteriggioni.

There, I began to understand what being an Auditore really meant.

_Italian sentences translated:_

*Does my father love me?

**Your jealousy doesn't make any sense.

***Renaissance pet name for Giovanni

****Marquis


End file.
